AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Heather Johnson and her husband showed up at the airport in Chicago super early this morning - we're talking 5 a.m. - with three kids and three suitcases in tow. And then she took a look at the lines to get through security.
HEATHER JOHNSON: My flight departed at 7 a.m., and we were not going to make it through security.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Yep, the airport was already packed with other early morning travelers, and in the midst of a partial government shutdown, security wait times are way up all over the U.S. TSA agents are currently working without pay, and many more than usual are not showing up for work.
CHANG: With that in mind, Heather Johnson felt she had only one choice to get her family from Chicago to Washington, D.C. - pay hundreds of dollars to purchase the CLEAR pass for her family, a private security pass so that they could whisk through those security lines.
JOHNSON: And that helped us to get through on time, and we were able to actually get something to eat before we boarded, which was good.
KELLY: Chris Sununu is among those calling for an end to the partial shutdown so that TSA agents can get paid and airports can get back up and running. Sununu is the former Republican governor of New Hampshire and now president and CEO of the industry group Airlines for America. On Sunday, he sent an open letter to Congress, along with nine airline and shipping leaders, asking lawmakers to fund the Department of Homeland Security. He told me these security backups, they are happening all over the country.
CHRIS SUNUNU: It's at JFK one day, Atlanta one day. We saw a three- or four-hour backup in Houston the one day. You're never quite sure what day and where it's going to hit. The TSA itself, I think, has been doing a very good job moving these kind of emergency workforces around. So when the issue hit in Houston, they sent 20 or 30 people from the other airports in the Texas area to Houston. The system's not in crisis mode. That's the good news - that it is being mitigated. But boy, it is a complete, unnecessary hassle for the American public and completely unfair and completely unnecessary to not pay your own employees on behalf of the federal government.
KELLY: What are you hearing from them, from the TSA officers not getting paid?
SUNUNU: You know, God bless them. They're - for the - by and large, they're still coming to work. Now, as that goes on to week four and five and six, the pressure grows. And what I'm hearing from them is, look, you know, we don't just wake up one morning and say, I guess we're not coming in today. They kind of look down the road and say, boy, if this goes on another five to 10 days, I got to pay my bills somehow. I talked to one TSO. She was a single mom and had kept working, you know, for the first three weeks, and she said, look, I got to take two days of this week. I'm going to call out because I got to drive an Uber. And I just have to make sure that I can put, you know, food on the table, and I think rent was coming up. And so she was going to do Uber for a couple of days, pull in the last few hundred bucks she needed to pay the rent. And the irony was she was picking people up and bringing them to the airport. She felt like - she's like, I should have been working there, but I just couldn't.
KELLY: For those who are not continuing to come in - and the Department of Homeland Security says that more than 350 TSA officers have left the force over this last month or so during this latest shutdown - are those positions easy to back fill or even whenever this shutdown ends, how long is it going to take to fill those jobs and get back up to full capacity?
SUNUNU: Yeah. No, they're not easy to fill at all because the message that all of this sends - and again, it's not TSA's fault, but the federal government. The message it sends is, well, why should I go into an industry where a couple of times a year, I might not be able to get paid two, three, four weeks in a row? So it does create a disincentive for bringing new workforce in.
KELLY: Homeland Security, DHS, has been blaming the shutdown on Democrats. They have been putting out increasingly direct and, I think fair to say, partisan public statements on social media and so forth. Does that kind of rhetoric - does it make it harder to reach a deal that is in the interest of passengers, people trying to fly in the industry?
SUNUNU: You know, when - as a former governor, you got to come to a negotiation saying, what am I willing to give in on, right? Where am I willing to give a little ground, you know, to find that common ground? One of the big issues was they didn't like the leadership at Homeland Security. Republicans gave that up. They fired Kristi Noem. I think that was a big political give to the Democrats. They said they wanted body cameras. Those are going in. They said they wanted new management and some calm and some better strategy on Minnesota. That has all come to bear and been calmed down. So I think what the Republicans are saying is, look, we've given in a bit here. So they're saying, Democrats, what are you guys willing to give? And so far, we haven't really heard of anything yet.
KELLY: Do you have any sympathy for the Democratic position for why the government's partially shut down? I mean, Democrats, as you know, have withheld support for funding because they want policy changes in the wake of what's happened in Minnesota this year on immigration enforcement.
SUNUNU: Yeah. And they've gotten some of that. But in the meantime, how about we just get these folks paid, right? That's - the TSA has nothing to do with any of this.
KELLY: So big picture, what's the long-term fix to ensure this doesn't happen every couple of months?
SUNUNU: Well, I love that you asked that. There are two bills sitting right there, bipartisan support, the Aviation Funding Stability Act and the Aviation Funding Solvency Act, which says whether it's an air traffic controller, a TSA agent, or a TSO, whatever it might be, if they're - if it's in the airspace and they're asked to come to work, you have to pay them. And the money's already there. It doesn't require any additional appropriation. It doesn't require another cent out of the American taxpayer. It's just the authority to pay them. So the solutions are there. We just need folks to get behind them and hopefully bring those home so the American public - so the discussion to happen, the policy can happen. But policy change can happen without bringing all of government to a grinding halt.
KELLY: Any response from Congress to your letter?
SUNUNU: Well, there's - I think over the past 48 hours we've heard a lot of movement. Unfortunately, you know, I don't have any confidence yet that it - that, you know, tomorrow morning, we're going to wake up, and this is all going to be over. It'd be great if it was. But the good news is that after two weeks of really no discussions, it sounds like things are shaking a little bit, moving a little bit forward. And we just need folks to step up in a leadership position because guess what? We have record travel going on in spring break. We have record bookings going into the summer. We have the FIFA World Cup coming. We have security issues - international and here at home - that are just under a lot of pressure and strain. So to not pay your security personnel at this time is really an irresponsible thing to do, especially with what we see in Iran and all the different threats that are out there.
So there's 100 reasons to do it the right way, very few to do it this way. And so hopefully, whether it's this letter or other pressure brought to the system, you know, everyone kind of gets in a room. I'm always a big believer - it sounds cliche. You put everyone in a room, you lock the door, you say, well, you know, we'll order some pizzas. We're not coming out till we figure this thing out. We used to do that in New Hampshire, and it worked.
KELLY: This is old-school vote wrangling, Governor, you're describing. Yes.
SUNUNU: But that's - it works.
KELLY: Yeah.
SUNUNU: It works. Sometimes old school is the best school, you know?
KELLY: Chris Sununu, former Republican governor of New Hampshire, now president and CEO of the airline industry group Airlines for America, thank you.
SUNUNU: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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